The Shorebound Swim With A One Click Kick – It’s A Tough Swim, But Worth It (FRIGID New York 2011)

Have you ever had one of those dreams? Where you’re having one crazy twist after another, and you can’t wait to see what will happen next… and then you wake up confused not sure what it meant and it even might fade away soon after waking, but it leaves these potentialities of ideas buzzing in your head the rest of the day? The Shorebound Swim With a One Click Kick: A Tragedy of Reason (Written by Markus Paminger & Directed by Alison Carroll) is an awful lot like that. Very enticing, but left intentionally vague, I think, so that you can believe whichever ending you’d hope for.

Or maybe it’s just to leave the audience dazed and confused. The work of director Alison Carroll, plawright Markus Paminger, and sound designer Renee Levine have worked well together to create an atmosphere that is full of many layers of context and texture that allow the actors to swim upstream all the more furiously.

The Shorebound Swim With a One Click Kick: A Tragedy of Reason has got a lot of things going for it, or against it, depending on your taste. There is ritual electroshock, a fair amount of nudity, craziness (or genius depending on how you see it), possible past life regression, esoteric concepts and inter-generational relationships aplenty, and a good heaping helping of Men Are From Mars /Women Are From Venus. Oh yeah, and everyone has their own doomed tragedy to fight against.

The fight against what seems like the inevitable is the most enjoyable part to watch. The characters are made up of the underage boytoy/assistant Victor (played by Nicko Libowitz) whose impulse to make his first love work - no matter the costs. He’s joined by the genius Nicholas (played by William Kozy, who gets naked for this by the way) starved for true significance who continues sliding down a slope of greater and greater lengths of eccentricity. Added into the mix is the former lover Natalie (played by Emma Worth) who was wronged years ago who now lives a daily life of acceptable desperation. Finally there is the central piece of the puzzle – the woman Edith (played by Robin Madel) who has cared for the professor for many years fueled by a desperate need to finally be loved by him. She is is probably the wisest one of the bunch – but also the most insane.

There are a lot of good ideas buried in the madness inherent in this play, but as Emily Dickinson said,

“Much Madness is divinest Sense
–To a discerning Eye.”

So, if you have time and the stamina to handle all the lunacy, catch Shorebound Swim’s last performance this Sunday (12:30) and let your eye discern the divine.

FRIGID New York Festival 2011 will run February 23-March 6 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1sr Ave and Ave A). Tickets ($10-$16) may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444. All shows will run 60 minutes long or less.